Culture Lite With Red Rose Chain's Tempest And Ken Bruce's Friday Night Is Music Night

As our glorious August sadly draws to a close we've been cramming as much as we can  into these long hot days and sultry nights and what could be better than a trip to the wonderful Theatre In The Forest? This year it was The Tempest that drew us into the dark woods at Jimmy's Farm for another of Red Rose Chain's fabulous takes on Shakespeare. Despite the inclusion of a couple of sea shanties and a glitzy rendition of It's Raining Men, the excellent production kept very much to the text and the family audience was spellbound by the woodland sprits, the drunken antics of Trinculo and Stefano and the (not too) monstrous Caliban.

As in previous productions, the intimacy of the setting and the family friendly adaptation of the play makes it accessible to all ages be they Shakespeare aficionados or simply looking for a good evening's entertainment. It's a whole lot of fun. 

And, if you want to give the kids that theme park feeling, book seats in the splash zone (ponchos provided) and get yourself fully engaged in both the storm and some very funny drinking exploits. You will have to hurry though. The production ends on 28th.

A pre-theatre dinner at Jimmy's Farm restaurant made the evening doubly enjoyable. Good, simple food at honest prices.

Our other outing this week was our last trip to this year's Snape Proms. Once again it was a glorious evening for us to enjoy a glass of wine in the beautiful landscape before going in to the concert hall.

Ken Bruce's Friday Night Is Music Night was being recorded and we were entertained by the BBC Concert Orchestra and four very talented singers to a programme of songs from British Musicals of the last hundred years.The singing and the music was perfectly done and by the time we got to a medley from Les Miserables even I ( a curmudgeonly hater of musicals) was tapping along. Ken Bruce is the consummate presenter - slickness personified - and his links between songs were informative and entertaining. A very pleasant evening.

In other news I have, of course, taken advantage of the sunshine to have a couple of sessions detecting. It hasn't been my most fruitful week although I have certainly managed to dig a hell of a lot of holes.

This week's finds

The absolute scrap

The lead scrap

The buttons and musket balls

Some slightly more interesting stuff

A Medieval Penny Edward IV (I think)

The reverse of the Edward penny plus another silver medieval penny and a Charles II rose farthing. All the coins were in pretty poor condition so it was not a very successful week.

I saw on Twitter that somebody had lost an engagement ring on Aldeburgh beach.

So this is where I ended up this morning in an attempt to find it for them. Sadly I drew a blank. It's a massive beach and they weren't able to pin the search area down to a small enough part of the beach for me to say with any conviction that I had covered it all. It's a pity I didn't find it although on the positive side I did end up with £2.10 p towards the parking cost.